CHAPTER TWO #2
They lapsed back into silence, the work proceeding smoothly despite the tension between them. Kaine lost himself in the familiar tasks of heating, shaping, and joining metal, allowing muscle memory to carry him through the motions while his mind wandered.
He should be there. He knew it, felt the truth of it like a physical weight in his chest. Roran had stayed, hadn't he?
Hadn't moved from Thalia's side since they'd found her unconscious in the chamber, her skin cold as ice but somehow still breathing.
Even Luna, practical and unsentimental Luna, had devoted herself to the task of waking Thalia, coordinating with the Isle Wardens and their strange storm magic.
But Kaine couldn't do it. Couldn't sit there, watching her face for the slightest twitch, the tiniest sign of return.
Couldn't be in that room with Roran, both of them raw with the same fear but expressing it in such different ways.
Roran turned his pain outward, into desperate action; Kaine pulled his inward, transmuting it into detached efficiency.
"Roran's being a fool," he said abruptly, breaking the lengthening silence. "Exhausting himself, refusing food and rest. He'll be no use to anyone if he collapses."
Rissa didn't respond immediately. She continued her work for several moments before saying, "And yet, he is there. Where she can hear his voice, feel his presence. If she wakes—when she wakes—his will be the first face she sees."
The implication hung in the air between them. Kaine felt a surge of anger, hot and bright as the forge. "You think I don't care? That I wouldn't trade places with her in an instant?"
"I think," Rissa said, her tone measured, "that different men show love in different ways. Some keep vigil. Others build walls to protect what they cannot bear to lose again."
Kaine opened his mouth to retort, then closed it. What was the point? Rissa had already seen too much, read too deeply into wounds he preferred to keep covered. He turned back to his work, focusing on the smooth glide of metal against metal as he fitted two panels together.
The barrier was taking shape, slowly but surely. The design was elegant in its simplicity: interlocking panels of forge-hardened iron, each one inscribed with channels similar to the glacenite veins Thalia had discovered in the cliff face.
Once assembled, the storm-callers would maintain a continuous electrical charge through these channels, creating a field that—in theory—would repel the black tendrils of the Deep Ones.
In practice, Kaine had no idea if it would work. None of them did. They were grasping at straws, trying anything that might buy them another day, another hour.
"Movement at the north approach," called a sentry from above, interrupting Kaine's thoughts.
He looked up, shielding his eyes against the afternoon sun.
From his position, he could just make out figures on the winding path that led from the coastal road to Frostforge's main gate.
His stomach tightened. More refugees. The academy was already well beyond its capacity, with people sleeping in shifts, food stores stretched dangerously thin, and tension growing between Northern and Southern factions despite the common enemy at their door.
"How many?" he called back to the sentry.
"Little over a dozen," came the reply. "Mixed group—looks like they've seen fighting."
Kaine set down his tools and moved to the edge of the battlements for a better view.
The approaching group moved with the weary determination of those who had traveled far and lost much.
Most were civilians, bundled in whatever clothing they'd managed to salvage, carrying packs and supporting each other over the rough terrain.
But at their head walked a handful of fighters, their postures alert despite obvious exhaustion.
The leader was young—too young, Kaine thought, to bear the responsibility of so many lives—but he carried himself with the confidence of someone who had survived too much to doubt his footing.
Even at this distance, the Northern features were unmistakable: the sharp jaw, the proud set of the shoulders.
Something about the way he moved tugged at Kaine's memory, a ghost of recognition that he couldn't quite place.
The group drew closer, and Kaine found himself moving toward the steps that would take him down to the courtyard. Behind him, Rissa called something, but her voice was lost in the sudden roaring of blood in his ears as the leader's face came into clear view.
The world narrowed, sound fading as though he'd been plunged underwater. It couldn't be. The odds were impossible. And yet—
Those were his father's eyes, but without the cruelty that had hardened them.
That was his mother's mouth, the one feature of hers that Kaine himself had inherited.
And the way he walked—that was pure Jorik, the same determined stride he'd had as a child, when he would follow Kaine everywhere despite being told to stay behind.
Jorik. His brother. Alive.
Kaine was moving before he made the conscious decision, taking the steps two at a time, crossing the courtyard in long strides. Guards were already opening the smaller postern gate, weapons raised cautiously as they assessed the newcomers. Kaine pushed past them, ignoring their protests.
The young man at the head of the refugees stopped short when he saw Kaine emerge from the gate.
For a heartbeat, they stared at each other across the remaining distance, disbelief mirrored in their expressions.
Then recognition dawned in Jorik's eyes, widening them with a hope so naked it was almost painful to witness.
"Kaine?" The name was barely more than a whisper, as though Jorik feared speaking it too loudly might make the apparition before him vanish.
"Jorik." Kaine's voice broke on the name, years of carefully maintained control cracking like ice in spring thaw.
They moved at the same moment, closing the gap between them in a few rapid strides. Jorik dropped the pack he'd been carrying, and then they were embracing, a collision more than an embrace, Kaine's arms wrapping around shoulders broader than he remembered but still unmistakably his brother's.
"They said you were dead," Jorik choked out, his fingers digging into Kaine's back as though afraid he might disappear. "After the prison sentencing—they told us you died in the mines."
Kaine pulled back just far enough to look at his brother's face, to see the changes the years had wrought.
Jorik was no longer the skinny twelve-year-old Kaine had left behind.
At twenty-two, he had grown into a man with hardened features and eyes that had seen too much.
A scar ran from his right temple to his cheekbone, still pink and relatively fresh.
But beneath the changes, it was still Jorik—the same determined set of the jaw, the same direct gaze.
"I nearly did," Kaine admitted. "But then I was transferred to Frostforge." He paused, swallowing against the tightness in his throat. "I tried to find you, after. Sent letters to North Hollows, but they came back unopened."
"They must have been intercepted," Jorik said, his voice low. "The whole clan still believes you’re dead. The Northern military couldn’t allow that delusion to be dispelled.
" He looked away, his brow furrowing with what looked like anger.
“It was hellish, after you were taken away. Our family faced many abuses at their hands.”
Kaine closed his eyes briefly, absorbing the news with a dull ache.
"I'm sorry," he said, the words wholly inadequate. "For all of it. For leaving you to face that alone."
Jorik shook his head, his grip on Kaine's shoulders tightening. "You did what you had to do. What none of the rest of us had the courage to do." A shadow passed over his face. "I understand now, better than I did then. What he was. What he would have done to all of us, eventually."
Around them, the other refugees watched with varying degrees of curiosity and impatience. One of the fighters, a woman with a hastily bandaged arm, cleared her throat pointedly.
"Jorik," she said, "we need to get these people inside. Some of them won't make it another night in the open."
Jorik nodded, reluctantly releasing Kaine but staying close. "This is my brother," he told the woman, a note of pride in his voice that struck Kaine like a physical blow. "He'll help us."
Kaine found himself nodding, falling back into the role of big brother as naturally as breathing. "Yes," he said, turning to signal the guards at the gate. "Yes, bring them in. All of them."
As the refugees began to file past, Jorik remained at Kaine's side, their shoulders nearly touching. "I have so much to tell you," he said quietly. "About the north. About what's coming. It's worse than anyone here realizes."
"I know," Kaine replied, thinking of the devastation they'd already witnessed, of Thalia lying unconscious, of the knowledge she might hold locked away in her mind. "But whatever it is, we'll face it together this time."
Jorik's answering smile was thin but genuine, a flash of the boy he'd been before life had hardened him.
In that moment, despite everything—the impending threat, the impossible odds, the weight of all they had lost and stood to lose still—Kaine felt something loosen in his chest. A knot of solitary grief unraveling, making space for something he had thought long extinguished.
Hope. Fragile and dangerous, but undeniably present. Not just for survival, but for the chance to reclaim something he had believed forever lost.
As they turned to follow the refugees into the fortress, Kaine cast one last glance toward the infirmary tower where Thalia lay.
Perhaps Rissa had been right after all. Different men showed love in different ways.
And perhaps there was room for both—for keeping vigil and for building walls, for waiting and for working.
For holding on and for letting go.